This knowledge is widespread among psychiatrists. They just call neglect induced autism “reactive attachment disorder” or “Institutionalism” to be polite. They don’t dare call it autism because mothers of autistic children will kick the doodoo out of their butts.

Anyway, look at these studies:

http://www.adoptionarticlesdirectory.com/Article/The-second-glance-at-institutional-autism-in-internationally-adopted-children/81

http://www.mcgill.ca/headway/fall2006/indepth1/

me having my mind stuck on the ancient world: this is not perhaps the best comparison, but your comment makes me think about the fairly recent interest among ancient historians etc. about slaves. to find out about what their lives were like, you have to read between the lines so carefully, and not only in literature, in medical texts, in (especially revealing) legal texts that are dryer than any potato crisp. when one starts to think that there may have been as many as 5 slaves to one Roman citizen, there’s a sense (to me) of a huge vastness—how many lives that were “different” do we just not know about.

Laurentius, well said. I think the emphasis on sociological or trend explanations is because as people, we always think we’re doing something new, not realizing that thousands have walked similar paths before us. There are so many, “If this causes autism, then…” statements that should shunt aside several proposed etiologies once and for all, but…they never seem to do so. The power of magical thinking over the human mind is so evolutionarily hardwired, we simply can’t resist it.

But what I am observing with Autism is that the way it is “concieved” of, and the desire to find its causation rooted in the desire for elimination is driven by social trends.

There are those who contend that Autism is an entirely modern late industrial phenomenon that only came into being during the second world war and the years preceeding it.

Autism is equated by such people with a great evil and with fanaticism of the Amish decry every modern invention as the cause of it, from television, mobile phones, vaccination, drunkeness in women, and no doubt immodesty in dress (there will be a study blaming the bikini somewhere take my word on it) to what is in the water.

This is social process, window dressing, and not revealing of anything about autism itself other than the fixation it has in the social minds of some people.

To give a thing a name somehow seems to give it being, as if Unicorns can exist because we have named and described what they should be.

That which we call Autism, like the poor has always been with us, but it is only because of changes and trends in society that it has been given a name, but think on this if Autism is the worst thing that can befall the child of an alcoholic mother, then the 18th century London of Hogarth’s “gin lane” must have been full of autism, before there was even a television set to distract the child into further depravity. No doubt Autism was as rife in 18th century London as it was in prechristian Babylon, because Autism has always been there. What is different is that it ought to be obvious that those other societies lacked the tools or language to describe it as this is a product of our modern times.

I am sure alcohol is inadvisable for any pregnant woman, but not because autism is the worst or the only outcome I am sure.

Autism has become a folk demon and that is the real story.